by Grant Allen
There was a sensation in court.
It simply extinguished him!
The burglar’s hat was three sizes too large for the gentleman in the dock; and the brilliant young barrister turned round, demonstrative, with a silent but triumphant smile to the jury.
When it came to the defence, Mr. Erskine and his client had things all their own way. ‘So remarkable a case of police blundering,’ the brilliant young barrister said, ‘had seldom or never come under his notice. The constables meant well, no doubt, but they were clumsy and incompetent. His client, a respectable gentleman of education and some small means, in the musical profession, in fact, and recently engaged at a well-known theatre, had been out that evening, as the evidence would show, walking with a lady of his acquaintance; a lady, to be quite definite (he was sorry to be obliged to refer to matters which ought to be private, but he had no choice in the case), to whom he had for some time being paying marked attentions, with a view to matrimony. He believed he was right in saying his client and the young lady were engaged to one another. The hour was late, it was true; but the lady, whom he would produce, was employed as a nursery-governess during the day, and could only meet her fiancé accordingly at an advanced period of the evening. Mr. Roper, his witnesses would prove to them, had just parted from the lady at the corner of the street, when he heard a loud shouting and a noise in front as of a sudden riot. Fearing that the Socialists or the Red Indians at Olympia had broken loose, or that the Salvation Army was performing midnight drill, or that some other danger to life and limb menaced society in general and the lady in particular, he turned back at once to protect her, as any one of you would have done under similar circumstances, gentlemen, and ran hastily in that direction; when, to his surprise, he found himself pursued and hustled by a howling mob of policemen, servants, bystanders, and loafers, including, no doubt, the actual burglar himself, who was perhaps, indeed, the very man that knocked off his client’s hat, as he passed, into the mud of the roadway. Alarmed and astonished, his client ran a little way, hatless, till he came up with the lady, when, to his profound astonishment, he found himself bullied, seized, and arrested before her very eyes on a charge of burglary — a crime of which the jury had only to look at the educated gentleman in the dock for a moment to see that he was, and must be, wholly and entirely incapable. He would call first’ — here a deep hush— ‘Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy.’
There was a stir in court as Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy, a delicate and modest-looking girl, in a plain dark dress, and a very quiet, almost Quakerish, bonnet, stepped into the witness-box. Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy was slight but pretty; her hair was plaited at the back in a neat coil that alone betokened the utmost respectability, and her accent was that of an educated lady. She gave her evidence with a graceful, shrinking timidity, which produced at once an immediate effect upon the susceptible hearts of the gentlemen of the jury. The story she told was short and simple. She had just left her friend, Mr. Roper, at the street corner when the tumult (as she called it) occurred, and she saw him a minute afterwards returning towards her, breathless, in great agitation. Another man, running past him at full speed, bare-headed himself, knocked off Mr. Roper’s hat into the road, and then disappeared, like lightning, round another corner. The next thing she knew, the police were upon them like a herd of wild beasts, and they shook Mr. Roper, and behaved most shamefully to him, ‘though I explained it all to them,’ the witness said simply; ‘but they wouldn’t listen to me, and they would arrest him.’ Here was Mr. Roper’s hat which she picked up afterwards from the gutter, all muddy as she found it. But the police had insisted upon giving him another hat which they picked up round the corner, thrown away, with a queer-looking instrument they called a jemmy and the bull’s-eye lamp that had been produced already by the police witnesses.
Cross-examination didn’t do much to shake Miss Pomeroy’s credit; and, indeed, the jury took it rather ill that so pretty and modest a young girl should be so roughly handled by the counsel for the prosecution. The other witnesses were of the familiar sort who didn’t see anything themselves to speak of, and who were of opinion that nobody else saw anything either.
The judge, a sceptical-looking gentleman with sandy whiskers, summed up, as was his wont, with luminous indecision. This was a case of disputed identity. The police took the prisoner in the dock for a well-known expert thief, and believed he was the man they found in the attic when the alarm was raised by the servants of the family. If the jury agreed with them, then, and in that case, they must find him guilty. The prisoner’s counsel had offered them an alternative explanation — a most ingenious explanation — and had brought up a witness — he must say a very straightforward witness — to prove his theory. If they believed that witness, whose evidence was partially corroborated by the facts about the hat, they must acquit the prisoner as the victim of an unfortunate error of judgment. If, on the contrary, they disbelieved the witness, but failed to see that the prosecution had proved the identity of the man in the attic with the prisoner before them, then they must give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. And the jury, thus admonished, after a very short retirement, returned to court to announce that, on serious consideration, they couldn’t feel sure the police were not mistaken.
‘Then you find a verdict of not guilty?’ the judge said sharply.
‘Yes, my lord,’ the foreman answered.
‘The prisoner is discharged,’ the judge observed loudly, with a cynical smile. Then, in a theatrical aside: ‘And he may thank his lucky stars for having got off so easily.’
Mr. Arthur Roper smiled in return, bowed politely to the judge with the sandy whiskers, stroked his moustache, and sauntered from the dock with easy nonchalance. The brilliant young barrister, by fair means or foul, had turned him loose once more, a free man, for another campaign against the society of his fellows.
At the bar he turned, and gazed blandly at the judge. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord,’ he said with charming effrontery, ‘but — may I have my hat?’ and he pointed towards the one he had tried on just before with such well-assumed disgust.
The court laughed aloud, and the judge, with a smile, said: ‘Policeman, give it up to him.’
As Linda and Douglas Harrison walked home together, both intent on their own thoughts, the girl broke the silence at last by saying abruptly, ‘I’m more glad than ever now you didn’t accept that brief, Mr. Harrison.’
‘So’m I, Linda,’ Douglas answered. ‘While I listened to that fellow’s cross-examination it made me ashamed of my profession. The man’s a rogue to act so. He knew it was all lies. He knew that woman Pomeroy was just going through a clever piece of amateur acting. When I think how much harm a fellow like him may do the world by throwing dust in the eyes of an ignorant jury, I almost regret I was ever called to the bar.’
‘And yet,’ Linda said thoughtfully, ‘there’s another side to it, too. How much good a man may do in helping to save some innocent person against all appearances to the contrary! Some day, perhaps, you’ll get such a chance; and if ever you do, you’ll be glad you’re a barrister.’
‘Perhaps I shall,’ Douglas answered carelessly. He thought little of the words then; but years after he remembered them on due occasion with a thrill of pleasure.
Meanwhile, at a bar near the court they had just quitted, Mr. Arthur Roper, his own master once more, was celebrating his release from temporary detention over a bottle of champagne with Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy.
‘Well, that was a near shave this time, Bess!’ the head of the profession said, holding his glass to hers and clinking it merrily. ‘You’re a brick, and no mistake! If it hadn’t been for you, my dear, blow me if I wouldn’t have been in Queer Street by this time.’
‘But he’s a clever young chap, too, that lawyer fellow,’ Miss Pomeroy answered, raising the glass to her lips and meeting his eyes with hers. ‘He pulled it through splendid. We must give him a lift with the trade. Here’s his very good health. Mr. Erskine! Mr. Erskine! The other o
ne was a muff; he’d never have done the job. But what licks me quite, Arthur, is why on earth your own hat that you dropped in the street didn’t fit you.’
Mr. Roper exploded in a short paroxysm of internal merriment. Then he lowered his voice confidentially. ‘My own idea!’ he murmured. ‘A capital invention. Steel spring inside the cork that lines the billycock. It keeps the cork pressed out while you wear it tight against the head. When I threw away the hat, I jerked out the spring, and nobody noticed it. First-rate dodge for once. But if one tried it twice, the police’d find out. Altogether, I never did a better or narrower escape in all my life; for if you hadn’t been waiting about outside in your neat get-up to help me with the swag it’d have been all up with me. Here’s my love to you, Bess, with your neat back hair; and may you live long, and keep out of the stone jug for ever!’
CHAPTER VIII.
DRAMATIC INTELLIGENCE.
A few days later Basil Maclaine was thrown into a perfect fever of excitement by receiving a note, very cordially worded, from Sabine Venables. This was more than he had hoped almost! He was getting into the very thick of Good Society now, and no mistake. He was beginning to be recognised. Last Wednesday he had been introduced to no end of the Best People at Mrs. Bouverie-Barton’s ‘little gathering’ of two hundred souls; and to-day, here was what the heiress of Hurst Croft herself wrote to him — and on a tiny pink sheet of notepaper, too, with her crest and monogram in gold and colours:
‘Dear Mr. Maclaine,
‘I’ve only just learned from Mr. Hubert Harrison, who is good enough to assist me in my little project, that you’re quite a great swell at amateur theatricals; and as we are going to get up a Pastoral Play in the grounds at Hurst Croft, I venture to ask you whether we might count upon your kind aid in arranging the piece, and, if possible, also in taking a part for us. The performance will take place about July 20, and the play we have chosen is “As You Like It.” As far as yet arranged, the cast will include Lord Adalbert Montgomery as Orlando, Mr. Harrison as Jaques, Miss Weatherley as Celia, and myself as Rosalind. We wonder whether it would suit you to undertake the part of Touchstone — which Mr. Harrison says you would render admirably. If you could do us the favour of answering at an early date, you would greatly oblige
‘Yours very sincerely,
‘Sabine Estelle Venables.’
Basil Maclaine leant back in his chair as he read that note in a delicious ecstasy of self-congratulation. To be sure, there were drawbacks and difficulties in the way; he didn’t for one moment disguise them from himself.
Bertie Montgomery was to have the part of Orlando — the part that allowed him to play most tenderly upon the Rosalind’s feelings; the part that anybody with a spark of regard for the heiress’s heart (and Basil Maclaine had fallen really in love with her, in his own way) would most have chosen for himself, and most have regretted to see falling to the share of his more fortunate rival. But there was no help for that. No doubt Old Affability, the typical British Philistine, her papa (who seemed to Basil Maclaine a perfect model of all that an elderly English gentleman of the banking persuasion ought to be), had settled that if ‘As You Like It’ was to come off at all in his grounds, nobody but Lord Adalbert should play Orlando to his daughter’s Rosalind. And quite right, too — from the papa’s point of view, Basil thought to himself frankly; for he was candid enough to admit, after all, that if he were a papa, and banking were his profession, he would like his daughters to marry among the very Highest and Noblest in the land — the Best and Greatest. It must be such a consolation to one’s declining years, you know, to feel one’s self the father-in-law of a Duke’s brother!
But then Touchstone! He could have wished, indeed, it had been any other part in the play but Touchstone. To be sure, the make-up was most becoming to him, with his dark complexion and black moustache; but the part itself was certainly not a dignified one. He hated comedy — though he succeeded best in it. Hubert Harrison was to be the Jaques. He’d have liked Jaques well enough; there was sentiment in that, and philosophy, too; and melancholy is so gentlemanly! But the Fool of the play! It was really most unkind of her to put him off, black moustache and all, with making love in by-play to that ridiculous Audrey!
Still, it’s something to be asked to take part in a Pastoral Play at all — pastoral plays were just then very fashionable — and it’s something to have your name mixed up with a lord’s and to be reported in Truth, and to feel that if you’re only playing the fool, you’re playing it, at least, in the very Best Society. Basil Maclaine was by no means unsusceptible to these varied charms; and when he wrote back, as he meant to do, ‘I shall be only too delighted,’ the phrase would contain a degree of truth that is very unusual with it.
Linda came in to clear away breakfast as he was still gazing with admiration at the crest and monogram. In the simplicity of his heart (for, like most of his kind, Basil was, after all, a simple-hearted young man, who expected the whole world to feel about everything exactly as he did), he handed her the letter. Linda read it through with careful scrutiny. ‘You won’t be able to get away from the office for the rehearsals, will you?’ was her first practical comment.
Basil, who had expected hushed awe and congratulation at so magnificent a programme, gazed back at her, almost speechless. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered, after a pause. ‘For an affair like this, I can manage to make arrangements. It’s the sort of thing one doesn’t get asked to every day, Linda.’
‘They might have invited you to take a better part than Touchstone,’ the girl went on, her pride for her lover a little piqued by the selection. ‘But I suppose it’s all right. Whatever part you’re cast for you always act so admirably.’
‘And then, look at the company!’ Basil answered with pride. ‘Lord Adalbert Montgomery!’
‘So I see,’ Linda said, without a tinge of admiration in her voice, exactly as if the man were a mere Tom, Dick, or Harry. ‘And Miss Venables is to be Rosalind. I ... I’m glad you’re not her Orlando. It’s such a ridiculous position for a man to have to assume — all that sighing and love-song making about a woman you don’t really care a pin for.’
Basil Maclaine stared hard at her with a sudden twinge of his accusing conscience. Could the girl actually think he was in love with her in the sort of way that would interfere with his making love in real earnest to Sabine Venables? He took Linda’s hand, unresisted this time, in his. ‘She’s a very pretty girl, Linda,’ he said, gently pressing it.
‘So I hear,’ Linda answered, looking him back in the face fearlessly; for it never even occurred to her honest heart what Basil was driving at.
‘And very rich,’ Basil went on, imagining he was disillusioning her.
‘Very rich,’ Linda replied, with a certain proud intonation in her clear, deep voice. ‘And the sort of girl any man might be glad to sell himself for.’
She looked beautiful as she said it, in that native pride of her womanhood that was perfectly natural to her. It was a shot fired at random, but it took effect. Basil was holding her hand in his own. All men are human — especially, I have observed, when a beautiful woman’s hand is clasped tight in theirs. Basil faltered, and was lost. ‘But not half so pretty or half so good as you, Linda,’ he murmured, much lower.
‘Thank you,’ Linda answered, and pressed his hand back. Then she felt this had gone quite far enough for the present; and in her matter-of-fact way she lifted the tray, and glided from the room. Basil glanced after her with an approving look. ‘Viewed merely as a woman,’ he said to himself frankly, with unwonted candour, ‘upon my word, she’s worth a round dozen of the other one! If she were only in one’s own position in life, now. But there! one mustn’t be a fool. Hang it all! one must marry a woman, at least, whose relations one wouldn’t be ashamed of before one’s own children.’
And the things of which Basil Maclaine would have been ashamed were not petty meannesses or vulgarities of ingrained nature, but the crime of poverty or the misdemeanour of living outside
Society. Noblesse oblige; and he felt that much was now demanded of a Government servant who had begun to mix with the Best People.
For the next week or two, however, in the intervals which the daily service of his country allowed him, Basil Maclaine was perpetually down at Hurst Croft, arranging and rehearsing for ‘As You Like It.’ The evenings were long just then; and by taking the first train after office hours he was able to get three hours of daylight in the country still, and to rehearse to his heart’s content with the rest of the company.
These meetings on the lawn at Hurst Croft did him two good turns. In the first place, they allowed him to see a great deal of Sabine Venables, who was courtesy itself to him. And, in the second place, they enabled him, by dexterous railway arrangements, to improve his acquaintance with Bertie Montgomery. He was quite in the swim of things now, he said to himself each day gaily.
But as there is a thorn to every rose, it must be added in justice that Basil would have enjoyed the rehearsals a vast deal more if it had not been for the constant presence of Hubert Harrison, who discussed minor points of detail in private far more often than was necessary with Sabine Venables, and of his brother Douglas, who cast a glance of disapproval upon Basil himself whenever he ventured to bask too freely in the sunshine of the heiress’s fickle favour. Nor did he care for the frequent paternal supervision of Old Affability himself, whose bland City smile — too much like a superior banking version of the draper’s assistant’s for Basil’s own austere fancy — asserted itself for ever in the foreground, with all the pertinacity of a Cheshire cat, when Sabine ventured for a moment to talk to anybody on earth except the favoured scion of a ducal house. Indeed, in more than one particular, Basil found Old Affability very much in the way. Especially as regarded that pale little creature who was cast for Celia, and in whom the master of Hurst Croft appeared to feel a fatherly interest out of all proportion, Basil thought, to her face or fortune.
